


The First Service

by LyrebirdArvo



Series: Pisica Vagaboanda: Sliske [1]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Being Baked Alive, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Canon Divergence, Clinical Dissection, Communal Cleaning, Culture Shock, Death, Genderless Sexless Culture, Macrophilia, Minor Oreb Appearance, Multi, Mutual Consanguinamory, Necromancy, Other, Scalie/Teratophile Mutual Fetishization/Hate-Solidarity, Schizophrenia Written By Schizophrenic, Temekel/Azzanadra Implied, The Mahjarrat Encounter Gender, War, Wightification, Zaros Preferring It/Its Pronouns, coping sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:55:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28366512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyrebirdArvo/pseuds/LyrebirdArvo
Summary: In which several ancient beings are far, far younger. A Menafic, if you discount the fact that Menaphos hasn't been built yet.
Relationships: Sliske/Crondis, Sliske/Trindine, Sliske/Wahisietel
Series: Pisica Vagaboanda: Sliske [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050488
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Judgement Enters

**Author's Note:**

> Both sex scenes take place in chapter 2.   
> The first is explicit, and starts at: "I nearly ran from the restaurant, but settled for something between a skip and a jog."   
> The second is more vague, and starts at: "I was now avoiding Icthlarin outright."

## Sliske

The first thing that I ever noticed - or what I would  _ remember _ as being the first thing I ever noticed - as we stepped from Freneskae to Gielinor was the chill.

Warm air from home bled from the tear in the fabric between worlds, clashing against this frigid, thicker atmosphere. Steam hissed as if we burned existence itself, and wind that churned from the unhappy exchange billowed in a fearsome dry-storm.

As clawed feet left familiar stone, ever shifting in cycles etched into each of us by tales and experience, they found a new sensation. It was almost nice, in a way that was softer than the gravel pits it conjured to mind; finer. An ash made of minuscule rocks. It caught the light from the bright orb far above - which I looked up to, regretted immediately, and blinked to clear the afterimage of - playing it back with a lesser brilliance.

“[We] [must / upcoming-need] [clean / pick out from] [this] [our ridges],” someone muttered behind me, and others rumbled in resigned agreement.

Outcries from around us caught my ears, and it occurred to me that we were not alone in this expanse of reflective grit.

The beings were, at first glance, similar to us. The longer I looked, the more those similarities became stranger and further from familiarity, melding into the uncanny.

They were small, for one. Much smaller even than my sibling, who I enjoyed saying had been constructed with only sparse materials available. And where our first-crafted exteriors were shades of grey, they used shades of brown. They ambulated on twin legs, most of them, but used them in ways that seemed restrictive; like they had something underneath, preventing them from making certain motions.

I would learn later that these were called bones, and armor, and that the beings caught between them were humans.

They continued to shout, tones wrapped with a din pulled between anxiety, excitement, and relief.

Sounds formed means of communicating concepts. Concepts shifted with context, but could always be extrapolated back to their basics. To each other, ourselves, we voiced concepts. These creatures before us spoke thin noises that masked concepts, wound up to the surface layers and played there, losing accuracy and harsh clarity along the path. As they repeated themselves, my mind twisted through the locking joints and broke into the marrow.

_ The entity [overseeing / controlling / ?? ] [non-endings / ??] - Icthlarin. Brings. [Assistance / reinforcement / detriment to others].  _

I peered over the crowd, and felt Trindine do the same, nearly shoulder to shoulder. We had interrupted something between the ridgeless soft-entities and another group.

These were closer in stature to us; several were even larger. There was more variance to these, with their horns in strange places - if Hazeel had been nearby I would have made some comment about [his] association - and their hides made of all manner of painted hues. Copper metal and purple fabric was fixed across most of them, with banners to match, like a strange mirror to the clay and tan surrounding us.

Icthlarin, dark stone slivers bound to the shape of what would come to be called a jackal, had explained their concept of a war in more vague sounds. A series of smaller conflicts, piled together to form bigger messes, all over land which did not churn. It was a strange thing to employ when brief skirmishes accomplished mediating disputes with more efficiency.

This, at least, still seemed close enough to what was familiar.

Icthlarin snapped for our attentions, and fixed their long scepter in a directive gesture. The sounds of concepts rumbled from between jagged non-teeth.

_ [Kill.] _

So kill we did.

* * *

## Sliske

I was already ready to return to Freneskae long before we had been brought to an encampment, watching with wide eyes as the light sank below the horizon. The cloth they gave us did nothing for the chill, which only grew worse as the light above - the  _ Kharid  _ \- cycled out of view. Warming ourselves with magic had already been discouraged, mostly by indication that the non-ridged beings  _ already  _ considered this land too hot, and that they would not survive being in contact with an appropriate temperature.

Their manners of death, I reflected from the crowded tent where many of us had gathered, was also extremely disconcerting.

The dreams of Freneskae contained a black fluid, thick like a syrup, which served as self extension; it existed within the children of Mah, the creatures, even several plants we had long cultivated for broths. What was called humanity, on the other hand, spilled a much thinner liquid. Red, which left too fast and in ways they could not control.

Their bodies lingered, as though the entirety of their form needed to be shucked off. A single body. They were stuck to only one form, and it all lingered behind. The thought left me nauseous again, as if I was back to watching another dozen fall in front of me.

At least the horned entities had had the good decency to crumple into ash.

My thoughts wandered back inside of the tent, among the murmur of voices and the little bit of warmth that had started to rise from all of us nestling close. Wahisietel lay against my side, in the crook of my arm, [his] head against my shoulder. Trindine had reclined between the two of us, head on my lap and legs hooked across Wahisietel's so that we formed a triangle close to the canvas.

The crowd would shift slowly, bringing those on the edges into the center in a pre-planned rotation. Our turn in the better warmth would come, but for now, we could only wait.

I tilted my head, finding a better angle I could use to swab the barbs of my tongue between the grooves along Wahis's head. [His] were folded so closely to the underlying plating that cleaning them always took twice as long, especially compared to when [he] cleaned mine.

Pretending to hate the process, I'd learned long ago, usually brought our times closer to even.

Temekel's droning voice had risen from the very center of the tent, a low and steady murmur that they used in some reassuring conversation with others. I had a feeling that Azzanadra was giving [their] ridges a similar care, with a motive less in protection and more in servitude.

Temekel played a strange, private game of favorites.

I spat the grit of sand from my mouth without really thinking, and was rewarded with a punch from Trindine.

* * *

## Sliske

When the humans had started to grow used to us, and we had started to learn the ways of using their sounds, they began to question us.

They poked and prodded for what we ate, why we ate so  _ little  _ for our size (whatever this meant), and so on, and on, until I began to weigh threatening to throw them towards the demons the next time we encountered any.

Only one question was both frequent and inexplicable enough to make me stumble across it, repeatedly, like an inconvenient pitfall.

"Did only your ‘men’ come?"

This was the first word I would encounter - but not the last by any stretch of the imagination - that had no intrinsic meaning or concept I could find lurking below. Any thread that I could find darted before my fingers, and I quickly grew extremely irritated with the line of thought.

A few of the others, not so much.

When I entered the tent that night, I found a vivid dissection in progress on what the concepts of 'man' and 'woman' and so on could possibly assume themselves to be. Wahisietel, of course, was in the thick of it. [He] had been interrogating the humans as much, if not more than, the humans had been interrogating [him].

Some suggested that the words seemed to indicate categories, possibly of body construction. This was quickly ruled out, those involved agreed, because they possessed too much variance to force the entirety of a group into only a few boxes; it would be a horrible system.

Another suggested they had heard the implication that it had to do with community roles, but this was rejected on the same basis.

I collapsed into a cross-legged seat on the floor, joining Trindine with a deep exhale. [They] nodded with fake contemplation.

The arguments were paused, temporarily, by Zemouregal thundering through the flaps of the tent with a human grabbed tightly around their shoulders. [He] deposited them in the center with very little ceremony, and demanded for the shaking form to "Explain this."

Which, of course, did not benefit us at all. The human squeaked out something extremely unhelpful before fleeing back the way they had been carried. To which Zemouregal threw [his] hands up, turned, and stalked over to the empty spot next to Trindine.

Trin patted [his] back when [he] joined us on the floor.

"It was a good thought."

"Hmph."

The lull given by the interruption had sparked a fresh volley of haphazard suggestions, such as the grouping words referring only to associations with the smaller target-referencing words. Which was then discarded because someone else had encountered someone using sets that didn't match the idea.

Exasperated voices rose, and I drummed two fingers against Trin's arm.

"Ske."

I made a vague gesture downward, when [they] looked my way, and [their] brow-lines rose in half mockery.

I pulled [them] into the shadows, and we sank away from the group.

They could figure something out.

* * *

## Sliske

The screams of battle swirled around me, muted into nothing more than background chatter as I worked.

Everything connected through a sort of fabric; each strand was a tie to tease loose and further fray. I played my claws against it, finding minuscule holes and coaxing them apart until my fingers were wound into the cloth itself.

Freneskae, I was beginning to learn with the benefit of hindsight, had already been full of 'holes.' A hole in and of itself. I had been able to glimpse down paths to layers far below, fractal and warned well against by anyone who remembered enough of those who had left and never come back.

Gielinor was not there, not yet. And because of that, despite it, there was so much more of the things I had not had to work with, even if the things I  _ had  _ worked with were so much fewer.

Mahjarrat, ourselves, had a similar standing. To use here's amounts, zeroes, null sums. Things could be put into the number, but nothing came in return. We were each ourselves, and that was it. Our vessels held our minds but our minds were our vessels and whatever might be a 'soul' was both each and neither, caught in the nowhere between the gems and the ash. 

Humans, on the other hand, were segmented. They held the meat of their vessel to a separate consciousness, with very little control over the meat itself. 

As I thumbed through the threads of one of the dying soldiers-in-purple, hastily pinning my own strings through what connective fabric held their mind and body together, I searched for wherever the 'soul' or 'spirit' that they spoke so highly of might be anchored.

The first several times that I had pulled humans diagonally, hemming them in this darkness where I could work on their corpses properly, things had gone poorly. I could puppet their bodies with ease, but the fact that I could not leave them unattended was counterintuitive. The re-living bodies between the demons and the purple-clad-humans did not, at least,  _ appear _ like they had someone constantly focused on them.

When I speared the mind and connected the two, I came closer. They could shamble about, and curse me in dull tones, but something still felt missing. Their minds always strained for escape, and eventually bled around the fabric in pursuit of a something-else that had long since left.

I found that something tucked below this one's sternum.

In my mind's eye it was almost metallic, amorphous. As I sewed it into my larger pattern, I felt it writhe and stretch in ways that led me to loop around it several more times, catching it tight in as much of a net as I could until it fell still.

It was at that point that I realized that the soldier was screaming, and presumably had been for some minutes.

But they had not yet  _ died  _ in the way that they usually did.

I stood, and pulled the larger strand of threads connecting the two of us like a leash. They stood on lopsided, red-streaked legs.

_ Paint, only paint. _

I let them go.

They punched my torso, and I heard the snap of an already fractured bone hitting its final breaking point.

_ I may have to reinforce those. Replace the marrow with metal rods, maybe. _

_ I should have the time to figure something out. _

* * *

## Sliske

I scavenged armor from the dead of the humans we had fought against - which would, given several hours, cause the circulation of a rumor that it was the opposing forces seeking to infiltrate us - and used it to dress my new little recruit.

"They look terrible, Ske."

"Thank you," I hummed as Trin rejoined us in the small tent, taking his spot - he was using 'he' today - on the spare stool back.

"I didn't find any perfume."

"Shame."

"But I did find oil with the embalmers."

He passed a small jar to me, and I kissed his knuckles as I took it.

"What did you have to bribe Zemouregal to let you in? I know he's been fixated on how they go about that."

"Bite me."

"Then give me your hand back."

He made a shrug, and shifted his arm. A silent  _ 'You should have taken the chance when you had it.' _

I made a note of that for later as I started to pour the oil across the armor's openings, rubbing the excess over the protesting re-living person's exposed skin.

* * *

## Sliske

By the final battle in the Pass - which would eventually become Al Kharid - when  _ we _ were the group pushing our adversaries to retreat, I had woven a small horde for myself.

I added dying Kharidians as I could, if nobody noticed them fall too closely, but the bulk of them were repurposed Zarosians. Convincing them to the task was surprisingly simple; many only required promises of an eventual re-death, which I gave willingly.

Few of us had any intention of remaining on Gielinor at all, then, so I had had no reason not to.

* * *

_ Temekel's voice rose. _

_ "We have helped you win your skirmishes, Icthlarin." _

_ "You have pushed them back. There is nothing suggesting they will not return, not yet." _

_ "When you have your proof, then." _

_ "Yes." _


	2. Judgement Serves

_ The Stern Judges came from emptiness,  _

_ To deliver us from emptiness. _

_ Hear not the words of the Stern Judges. _

_ Speak not the words of the Stern Judges. _

_ Draw not their hollow gaze. _

* * *

## Sliske

The city was not yet Menaphos, though Menaphos would one day be built atop what we left behind. 

When we arrived at war’s end, we were greeted by staggering, grand buildings cloaked with cultivated plants, the ever-present sheen of gold, air that carried the tang of salt from the ocean, and a fresh change of wardrobe. Each another new thing to get used to. 

The comfort of the larger tent was replaced with the strangeness of stagnant housing. Each room was nearly cubical, and disconcertingly individualistic, even if each of us was kept relatively close. I was given my own unit, same as the others; it stood in a larger building that had been repurposed into housing.

I never found myself using it for my own head.

Trindine and I shared their room, most days, and filled it with all of the terrible items we could. Heavy carpets to insulate the walls and give a sense closer to that of home, which felt further away with every step. It became comfortable, a sort of hide-away between us, though they took everything that happened in stride far better; we were both fluid, but they rarely suffered under my same compulsive itching. 

Wahisietel’s room was my second refuge. He took quickly to the solitude, the concept crawling around inside of him like beetles through the sand, and in the same way came the fear that I would lose him to some extreme of stagnancy. So I harassed him as I always had, but with more frequent flavors of paranoia tinging my fixation. 

The cycle of light to dark, to light again, passed slowly. Dully.

Trindine and I made a valiant effort to entertain ourselves. Sometimes they would drag someone below the surface of the Elid - named for the prophet-consort of Tumeken - and I would stand watch as we counted how long their lungs could last. Sometimes we would climb up to the flat rooftops and see how far we could go just by walking. We tried a few of the new board games, which I found I could usually win by covertly eating the pieces just as with the ones from home; I was still made to cough them up whenever they caught me.

Ingratiating ourselves was its own kind of draining entertainment, no matter how often it lead to me biting my fingers. We were given roles akin to figureheads, a decorative guard, and kept under Icthlarin with a suffocating kind of accountability. In rotation, we were to watch the passages of the Noumenon, or act as ferry-pilots, and otherwise jump to command. 

The ferry position, of course, was one that was like it had been made for me, so it was the only task whose assignment I relished. 

Each person was a stranger, completely at my whim, without a chance of having heard a word from me before. So I was able to tell them everything in grandiose displays limited only by the size of my stand on the craft and the driving-pole in my hands. 

I would tell them about the colors I enjoyed, and how cold here was, and how Freneskae existed. Nonsensical stories that warped at the edges in a living stream of consciousness. What Wahis had throttled me over last. How much I loved when he throttled me, and how he was in fact good at it, with his firm hands. How our own shared crafter - our mother, Wahis was calling [them/her] now - would forget which one of us was made first, despite the fact that I was one of the first to meet him at all. About the humming in my chest and hands and ears and eyes that would come on suddenly and then leave me empty.

The more comfortable I grew, the more I told them, until I one day realized I had said too much. 

* * *

## Sliske

I walked with no sense of urgency, warming the air around me to counteract the chill of where Crondis's pool - among other things - had left me wet.

The towel was performance more than function.

I snuffed out the flow of magic as I drew closer to the restaurant, so as not to boil anyone's insides, and hissed low at the influx of chill.

Heat from the open cooking ranges - with their spreads of flat-breads, bulbous fruits, herbs, long cuts of heavily spiced meat - swirled around me as I passed through, and even though it wasn't nearly enough, it did help. I spied Wahisietel's bald head over the crowd, the white stripes of his ridge tattoos luring me over like a familiar path. I didn't sit down right away, but instead lingered near the table as I watched him converse with someone that had stopped by in passing.

A student of some sort. Young for humans, if I remembered correctly. Ureb?

I watched Wahis rub the bridge of his nose, and glare at me with heavy-lidded eyes as he finished wrapping up whatever they were talking about. The student wandered off after several very formal good-byes, and I draped myself into the awaiting chair.

"Again, Sliske?"

"I have needs."

"You are the only one here whose needs include unending animosity with a reptile."

"More for me."

He made an exasperated, resigned noise, which I smiled at as I helped myself to the more burnt slivers of camel meat between us.

"Icthlarin was asking after you, again."

I pretended not to hear him. He let me.

"One of your Scabarite people?" I asked between bites, with a nod to where Ureb was collecting several packages of food.

"Along those lines, for the moment."

"How very cryptic of you."

"I am not at all cryptic."

"You are, you can be even worse than me. And I lie as I breathe, you know that."

He muttered something about crocodiles into his mug, and pretended he hadn't. I didn't let him.

"I'm going back for seconds after this, you know."

_ "Sliske." _

I nearly ran from the restaurant, but settled for something between a skip and a jog. I was drunk on the thought of what I was returning to, and the adrenaline of it made everything so hard to focus on. So I chose not to focus on anything except for what I could.

The temple greeted my return from intermission with the scent of flowers and the sound of pouring water, cascading in tiers until it found its way to the central pool. I checked that my clothes were where I had left them - they were - and draped the towel next to them before taking the shallow steps into the water.

"Back for more," Crondis rumbled from deep in her throat.

"Yes." I ran my claws against her leg as I drew closer, nearly quivering over the imbalance of size between us. "My brother is well, he says hello." He didn't, but-

Her claws tightened around my body, pulling me closer as I gasped a short breath. Her thumb, capped with gold, rubbed between my legs until I left the slackness of bliss for the tension of need.

She returned me to the water like I had been discarded, but the unnecessary tap of a claw against her knee invited me to what I would have taken regardless.

I returned my attentions to her leg, where I played my tongue against her scales. Down to the ankle, where I introduced teeth and aggression. The top of her clawed feet, where tender predation returned. 

She had me stop as I began to thrust against the water, on my knees and mindlessly hungry. She pushed me over with her clawed toes, and the water of the pool engulfed me before the pads of her foot drowned out the light.

The rough of her heel ground down against my chest, pushing slow circles across my torso and fueling the warmth clawing below my hips. I palmed myself, the water churning in non-lungs I barely used and across the tender skin of a cock that only existed because it could. Electricity scattered across my mind as I was suffocated, ruined, unable to get off as I bucked and struggled. 

I choked as she let me up, where I failed to stand with any kind of grace or poise. She had shifted her legs and her skirt, parting them just enough for me to enter, and it was all that I could see. 

Crondis was warm, and slick, and an all-encompassing delight to be inside of. I steadied myself against a leg with one hand, before using both to massage her as her breath grew uneven. She would occasionally rumble, content, and the sound would always roll higher at its end.

I forced my hips like we were about to be removed, and had to make every second count. I wanted more. I needed it, and it was mine to take right here. 

I was in a frenzied haze by the time I felt myself come close to breaking, with only enough coherency left in my head for my ears to relay that she told me to pull out. I fought it, but did, and painted her thighs and folds instead.

The sight only inflamed the ache, but she was already closing her legs and moving her skirt back.

I could hear myself being indignant before it registered through the buzzing haze as me. 

"I'm not done."

"You are."

"I am coming back tomorrow."

"Do that. We will see."

I dressed. She watched. I left, and could feel her watching that, too.

The side-street next to the temple, in shadows layers below, watched me rut the rest of my frustration against my hand, mind blank but for her scales. 

* * *

## Sliske

“That’s your room down the hall, is it not?”

I paused, adjusting my hold on the crate, and peered down over top of it. An attendant stared back up at me, face creased and stern. 

“It is.”

“See to it you do something about the smell. I’ve been hearing nothing but complaints about it.”

_ Bold. Or, more likely, they’ve just given up caring. _ I could respect that. “I intend to, my  _ sincerest _ apologies. The last few days have slipped away from me.”

They muttered something-or-other, and I looped past with a tight spin, the contents of the crate rattling against each other as they slid. The fact that we had been noticed added a twinge of urgency to my step as I nudged open the door and tucked myself away into the darkness of ‘my’ room.

The smell  _ had _ gotten bad. Wights were draped from the ceiling at the crooks of elbows and knees, standing in tight clusters, and piled across what furniture I hadn’t removed. I had assumed that the way they baked whenever they were sent to tasks across the desert meant fewer complications, more dryness, but all it seemed to be doing was bringing its own set of problems. 

They were mummifying, in a way, which staved off what would have been the worse smell of decomposition. But it did nothing to ward off a certain kind of must. 

I pried away the lid, plucking strings so those standing would collect the jars of perfume to rub between themselves and the others.

I didn’t hear the door re-open, but I did hear the voice that spoke up next to me with the back of a hand patting my upper arm.

“Ske.”

“Trin.”

“Orgy in here.”

I snorted, pressing my palm to hers as our fingers intertwined. “That could be arranged.”

“You would.”

I pressed my lips against the front of her ridges, humming brief and low. She returned the gesture by pressing her fingers along the top of where my facial ridges joined my jawline, rubbing slow lines into the groove. I pulled away first, but only enough to talk.

“Are you bored? Or are you here for other reasons?”

Her claws dipped, pressing in with painful pricks. “To yell at you.”

“Oh, please do. I’ve been terrible, mistress.”

The cut in her eyes and the harder dig of her claws told me I’d gotten the tone slightly wrong. 

“Icthlarin was looking for you.”

“... Ah.”

“Again.”

* * *

## Sliske

I was now avoiding Icthlarin outright. It felt like a tense game of waiting, both of us sitting on our heels as we anticipated the other tipping our hand and approaching first. 

I had decided that he would have to find me, and until that very second I was going to pretend that everything was fine. 

Which had brought me several days of doing an irritatingly weighty amount of nothing, pacing and drinking blended fruits and staring at the walls as they collapsed into fractured patterns that I knew would lead me far from here if only I were to give in and follow them. 

But, I did not. Not yet. Instead I finally forced myself to walk the streets under comfort of night, allowing myself to get lost in the network of cut stones and still flowers, until I stopped in front of the building where Wahis kept his room. His windows were dark, but I could not get a sense of his imprint, dulled in rest or otherwise. Chances were that he was off with his nose buried in parchment and dust, or drinking with Mizzarch and whoever else. 

A thought began to creep its tendrils through my mind, and I found myself walking back to one of the market squares. 

I finished well before he returned, and so passed the time languid beneath his blankets. They were much thinner than mine and Trindine’s; he was adapting better in every feasible way. I was close to dozing before the sound of his footsteps at the door kicked me back into a hyper-focused awareness. He was grumbling as he opened the door, the light from the hall lanterns spilling in and joined by where he freshly lit his candles.

The grumbling stopped, punctuated by a sigh, when he saw the petals. 

“Sliske, I know that this is you.”

I said nothing, only smiled and waited for him to follow the trail around the corner. 

It took him several minutes, because he decided to take his sweet time. The clatter of him setting things down. The pour of his usual nightcap. 

And then he appeared, and he was his perfect, stern self.

“What are you doing.” His voice was flat, unamused, but where his eyes traced made it clear that he, as always, knew what I was doing. What we were both doing.

“Maybe I was lonely.”

“Then go have Trindine throw you a fuck.”

“You know that my cravings for both of you are unique, and distinctly irreplaceable.”

He grumbled, something about my  _ fool-assed head _ and  _ thinking with the wrong end, _ which heralded the systemic removal of his robes and the deliberate, graceless way he joined me under the blanket, the bed frame sagging with a groan of protest.

I wound my arms around him, sliding closer and pressing my nose in against the crook of his neck. My fingers found his front, and my front found his rear, where I pressed my entry into with well-traced practice.

His slow, soft, muted gasps into the night air carried me into the bliss of a perfect, familiar distraction.

* * *

## Sliske

The confrontation came on the street; that was the only place for it, and we both knew it for different reasons. 

“Sliske,” he began. His stubbed feet shifted once, twice.

“Oh, alright.” I spread my arms in a placating gesture, slowly pacing to the side as I sized up potential exits. Icthlarin matched my steps in the opposite direction, and in that way we wound a crooked circle. “You’ve caught me! I  _ do _ fantasize about throwing rocks at you. I sometimes even toss them to myself.”

Air hissed through the slits of the nose of his carved face as he exhaled.

“Your theft.”

My fingers prickled, winding into the messy cluster of strings I had spent these dull, numbing years constructing.

“What about it?”

By then, the crowd that had already been present was growing still, more directly centering us. 

“I have come to take the dead you have secreted away back into my care.”

I pulled, the summons larger than I had tried before now. One or two through a gap was simple enough; here, I mobilized all of them. They stumbled into the bare stone circle our encounter had cleared, the gold of their pilfered armor glinting in the midday sun with a sharp kind of brilliancy. I could feel the ache in my teeth as I snarled.

“Then come and  _ take them.” _

“Very well.”

He did, with barely so much as a gesture; the sharp stone that made his nails felt as though they clawed against my chest, hollowing some part of my core away even though he was too far for contact, and had cast no magic.

He did not only remove them, but  _ displaced _ them, and the strings had responded accordingly. They were tightening in on themselves, and looping back around into a terrible kind of feedback that sent the ink-bile pulsing through my ears and behind my eyes as I retched. I heard the clattering of bodies - empty meat - slumping around me, and the sound of departing footsteps, but could not see him.

_ “Icthlarin!” _

“You are done, Sliske.”

My teeth cracked, and I unraveled.

* * *

## Sliske

I vanished. 

I had to, at times like this, and it was never done consciously. After certain conversations with Zamorak. Between each of those disastrous first interactions with Trindine.

I would walk, or drift, sinking into static and following fractal paths that lured me like a siren’s song away from whatever had ruined me. Sometimes across land, sometimes across less tangible concepts that frayed at my edges and threatened to swallow me. 

And I would always, inevitably, find myself wandering back. Or running. Usually with molten rock churning just behind my heels. Then, we would pack up, we would move, and in the process it always seemed like everyone else neglected to remember that I had been the herald. Except for me. Except for Wahis. Except for Trindine, too, once they caught on. I was a terrible kind of luck to be around.

The shifting of the land had never caught me. But now we stood worlds away from anything familiar, and whatever pandemonium that found my wake, magnetized to whatever found me too loose to hold to reality, would be just as new.

But, of course, I didn’t have a single rational thought about that in the moment.

The only thoughts in my mind were of bile, and fury.


	3. Judgement Departs

## Sliske

_ It is no different from what we do. What we have always done. ‘Their death is our gain.’ A ritual cannibalism of their selves, reused, repurposed, turned back around and twisted and kept easier than they had been before. Easier than before. Better than before. He is using us, so it was really only fair of me. And it was no different than what they were being used for already, by someone else. I made it cleaner. They could give in completely, instead of struggling to pretend. I struggle to pretend. Not to act, which is simple, but pretend, which is hard. I pretended for each of them, to prevent it from being a problem, but nothing is allowed to be overlooked. Take a pick to him. Break. Nothing bad, nothing terrible. I think I’m spiraling. I should be, if I am not. It is cold. Insulation. I will find a way to make the nets better. Harder ties, better knots, smaller gaps, more things, more things, more problems, more projects.  _

_ Nothing simple. _

The sand churned too far away and too close, dragging against my feet as it swirled and hissed in an endless array of rippling patterns. It took me several moments to sorts the snakes from the grids, but I found the trail and followed it west. This was where the threads lead, where the seams were frayed, where if I leaned close enough and let my inside ears invert I could hear the strange hums that underlaid the wind.

Bare paths became encampments. Encampments became bare paths again. Encampment. Path. Green. Town. Path. Wall. Gate. Road. Diagonal. Faster. Running. Twisting. 

I was surrounded by sharp-cut sandstone and marble, the alien familiarity of sand gone in favor of other terrain covered by different textures of flat-stones. Unfamiliar crowds with faces that refused to come into focus. Raised streets lacking so many flowers, instead replaced by water. Curved roads, diagonal roads, roads that carried me past other walls and across stair-ramps and carpets. Hallways, mosaics, murals.

A chamber with pits in the floor, the river that would be called the Salve passing beneath the gaps between. Strange banded rows for standing. Pillars. A platform before another platform, circular, one for a speaker and one for a throne. A speaker in the painful shade of red-orange that I could never see directly. A figure in distorted copper and wisps of purple, whose pointed metal face boasted eight slits for eyes that pierced into the lower layers where I now stood still. 

A fray prickled against my neck. I knew well enough to ignore it.

My feet left the shadows and the rest of me tried to join them. Something in the air stirred. The people crammed into the room around us, maybe. The speaker performed their role, but their words slipped past me. The figure on the throne rose, no feet finding the floor below their train.

My mouth opened, and in some part of my mind, I registered that I was conveying a very simple concept.

_ [I] [have / possess / give] [you] [an offer.] _

* * *

## Sliske

The unpleasantry of lucidity was trying to sink its claws into me by the time of our council, held on the midway pass where sand and grass met with high mountains.

My grasp on what I had said was hazy. I had informed it of what we had been through, in what had surely been an extremely roundabout way, and it had sat there like a statue except for the sharp click of gauntlet fingers ticking against the throne’s armrest. When it replied, it did in kind, and as the attendants around us writhed - were dismissed for writhing - that bass voice reverberated below the faceplate.

It - Zaros - was too a Dream. Not a dream-of-here, as the younger Kharidian gods were from Tumeken, but closer to the same as  _ us; _ a dream of Mah that we all in turn dreamed-alive. 

It was an opening of doors, each one closer to there and further from here.

Which, of course, was the source of the latest conflict. Several of us were now accustomed to this part of the here, and wished to stay. Others were more desperate for familiarity of any flavor. Still others had not lost sight of our original intent to return to Freneskae, even if the implications of return were now caressing doubts into the crevices between my ears. 

I stood closer to the back, pressed shoulder to shoulder with Trindine, one of my arms hooked with one of theirs. As the others spoke, shouted, to each other and interrogated our guest, Trindine and I held our own silent conversation.

A look out of the corner of their eye - a ‘What did you do’ - and a shrug from me, innocence. The slight head angle of doubt. The mirrored head tilt of insistence. A prick of their claws. A gesture with my eyes in the direction I had walked. Their eyes going to the water then back to the City. A slight shake of my head.

Their lips pressed against my ear. “There should be light in your eyes, from this. There isn’t.”

“It will come soon. It always does.”

* * *

## Sliske

It did.

We were given several days to decide if we would stay or go, but very few of us needed them. Of all of us, only a handful had chosen to remain Stern Judges; Temekel and Azzanadra the most vocal among them, if only one of them really chose.

All that remained for the rest of us, those who would venture to Zaros, was the act of departure itself. 

Some of us had brought drums during our initial crossing, and they were being well-employed now. We could slink away in the night, or we could declare with a vibrant, destructive wake that told the world - and the situation we were leaving behind - of our displeasure.

And only one of those, of course, was a very ‘us’ thing to do.

Fires already brewed as I ran, the world around me becoming a mad dash of oils and spilled plaster knives. It hadn’t yet properly begun, but to me it all felt so deliciously close. My feet brought me to her temple, as they had so many times before, and likely never would again. 

I could tell by the slits of her opaque eyes that she tasted something stirring, but the world rushed past far too wonderfully fast for me to care.

“You’ve come back, Sliske.”

Where the sculpt of the ceiling met her skull radiated out in vibrant loops, slipping through my control like the aggressive glee in my voice. “We are leaving.”

“All of you?”

I nodded, shifting in place with a restless, buoyant energy. “Every single one of us. We are moving shop, my dear, and I’m afraid you aren’t invited.”

She did not rise to the mood, and instead almost looked wounded with her lips - such as they were - curled. Some more lucid part of me acknowledged the change, but couldn’t place the significance. I continued to say things, words with concepts attached, but I lost time like water running through my unclenched fingers. Metal glinted, a bowl thrown, my strings snaring a priest drug into the crossfire, pulling them with me as I bounded out of the temple, down the steps and into the street, Crondis’s silence trailing in my wake.

The fires had started in earnest, and my web of hastily cobbled marionettes strained against my fingertips as I shepherded them into the thick of frays the others had begun. Market stalls were weaponized, thrown, as were the people who maintained them. Chunks of brick crumpled under the pull of magic, bringing buildings toppling down as their supports were ripped away. The ground shook under the force of those shifting it to spread wide crevices, swallowing those we had turned on into the darkness below, where the rock’s swift return would leave them ground into a fine powder.

We were a violent, throbbing heart, and the destruction ran its course through us and out into the wider organism.

I found Trindine strangling a soldier against the heavy dust and shrapnel; I helped by covering their mouth and nose. 

We found Wahis running amok, unrelated to the wider carnage, sealing wooden crates with an unconcerned methodicalness before tossing them into the river. I had no interest in that, but took note of where he was, and knotted several struggling assistants to his bizarre cause. In several years, I would learn that contained within were scrolls and bound books and preserved insects, which would not surprise me in any sense.

Then the gods were among us, those shaped-as-animals with every use of their teeth matching ours. But there stood far more of us than them, and even when gemstones began to fall, the collective surge of adrenaline went unhindered. 

Except for the growing sense of something being  _ wrong _ that started to creep around my neck. 

Het twisted, blades flashing through ink; Apmeken darted from cluster to cluster, chains and cloths for snaring pulling a destructive wake; Meirant, spear in hand, followed her cats. What few of us had opted to stay were not outright opposition, but they certainly did not help us. There was no sign of Icthlarin, or Crondis, or Elidinis, or Tumeken. The first of which concerned me more than the last, which should not have been the case.

The betraying sign of trouble only came when it was far too late. 

I realized that I was warm.

And then, for what would be the last time, I started to feel too _ hot. _

The air around us shimmered as the younger gods vanished with an unseen cue, spiriting themselves and citizens away into the harshness of the midday light until the only beings I could see were us, bewildered and tense. Us, and Tumeken as she ascended to the central square with slow, methodical steps, flanked by Temekel and Azzanadra on one side, Icthlarin on the other.

The air itself crackled now, joined by the popping of hard skin and the uncertain vocalizations of pain. 

Tumeken regarded us. It felt as if we all stared back.

She raised a hand sunward, and became the eye of a tempest of searing white flecked by gold and red that blistered my eyes no matter how tightly I shielded them. Screams - mine, everyone else’s. I clawed blindly for Trindine, and for Wahisietel who was too far away, and choked on crying sobs as hammers pounded against my skull with the last words I would have said to either of them. 

When the darkness that followed after the eternity struck, I assumed that I had died. 

A proper kind, an irrevocable one, where I no longer held together and even my gemstones were nothing but grit. But if it was a death, it was a crowded one. I was held in a tight vice by Trindine’s arms, and they in mine. We stood that way for a moment, shaking, our eyes adjusting to the other end of contrast; once I could see, I searched. 

We both found Wahisietel and Mizzarch when they found us, and the four of us clustered together. The others under the dome of upheaved rock and debris were doing similarly, and hushed murmurs of panic started to rise, punctuated by harsh gasps. 

The gasps alone drew my attention, as it must have several others, because the following moments felt as if we were taking collective stock of the situation:

_ 1) Someone had raised this dome, requiring some amount of planning  _

_ 2) They could not have been disoriented, and so were not inside of the blaze, but had rushed in _

_ 3) Temekel was much, much larger than the one standing there  
_

Azzanadra strained with his palms against the stone like a lone mineshaft beam, quivering and fraying at the edges even while several of us rushed to reinforce him, holding him steadier. Others used the clarity to join him, clawing for magic and pulling their own covering of fallen walls, rock, and sand over the outside of the done, but Azzan had made himself the keystone, and he was breaking.

The stone above his palms rolled, churning under the onslaught of the sun and dripping molten-white in long rivulets down his arms. He hissed through his teeth, muffling weak cries as those of us around him tried to divert and cool the flow. His arms themselves began to crack, boiling between heat and pressure, chipping to the floor in dark-stained globules. 

Trindine and I braced against his back, holding him firm, and plugging his ears against the sound of Temekel on the other side. 

Then there was only us and the sand.

Whether we had been there for hours, or days, or weeks, it didn’t matter. The pressure faltered, and the heat evaporated, and the influx of wind that came to fill the vacuum cut harshly against us. We evacuated the dome, not allowing the slip to pass us by, after prying Azzanadra’s hands free and passing his limp, quivering body over to be carried on a hastily torn canvas drag. 

The City was melted down as if it was clay brought to a boil. Very little suggested it had even been a place to inhabit, much less ever inhabited at all.

Tumeken had stumbled, fallen, pressing a hand to her chest with a heavy look of fatigue. Temekel and Icthlarin tended to her, the former quivering with his own blisters and fury. The latter and I exchanged long, empty stares, which only lasted for a second before Trindine grabbed my arm and pulled me into the departure. 

Azzanadra sobbed as he was carried. He sobbed for his hands, for Temekel, and for the terror of his first world-shattering taste of rebellion.

It reminded me, again, that he had not existed for much longer than Wahisietel. That only a handful of us had existed for very long at all. There, we had been young, but here, we were already each viewed as old. 

We would never have the chance to be either. 


End file.
